Excerpt from Journal of the Silent Majority
The major obstacle to violent revolution is Christianity. One way atheists could universally counter it was by the direct assault of trying to replace it, especially in Russia, where the relatively more moderate German experience of Romanticism softened the impact of Socialism. The attempt by the journalists and heretics is nothing new. In that era the incarnation was called Deo-Humanism. “This was the religion founded by Alexander Kapitonovich Malikov, one of those involved in the repression which followed Karakozov’s attempt on the life of the Tsar. He had been banished to his native Orel, and there he had founded his ‘deo-humanism’ based on the need of each man to seek God within himself.”(notation) In other words, man is the measure of all things and he would not have to justify his most violent actions. “But the outlines of this religion of equality had hardly yet been sketched in. It had not become the centre of their thoughts, as it had for the followers of ‘deo-humanism’, and it was still more a cloak for their political ideas.”(notation) Today it’s just called atheism. “It was essential to destroy faith in a heavenly world, and create it in the people.”(notation)
A direct attack on Christianity proved effective, but it often wasn’t the best option. During my decades of research into the origins of revolutionary 1960s, I was often struck by the occasional reference to its destructive participants as being profoundly religious. This is not new. Franco Venturi in his groundbreaking book on revolution often cites the phenomenon: moral code, moral roots, moral atmosphere, moral ideal, religious community, religious attitude, religious impulse, religious feeling, religious socialists, religious socialism, religious element, religious spirit, religious enthusiasm, religious roots, religious ambience, religious passion, spiritual impulse, spiritual process, spiritual flowering, ad infinitum.
These phrases resemble the shimmering gyrations and neon displays of the cuddle fish that uses deception to do its dirty work. In effect, by calling evil good one could neutralize the adverse effects of Christianity on revolutionary excesses. Another example, “So powerful was this ethical spirit among the Chaikovskists that it was sometimes expressed in religious terms – a religion which gave a more or less simple symbolical form to their aspirations to purity and total sacrifice.”(notation) Michael Bakunin, Europe’s leading anarchist, boldly declared that destruction is creation. Also constant among the proponents of chaos is the old convenient saw that Christ was the first revolutionary.
